Alex Singleton is part of the Daily Telegraph's leader-writing team and is a contributing editor at the Sunday Telegraph. You can visit his personal site and follow him on Twitter.

RMT strike would damage the railways

The RMT is threatening the first national rail strike since 1994. The union is unhappy that Network Rail's signalling and operations staff are only being offered a 4.9 per cent pay rise.Â

Is the RMT out of touch with real life?

That is substantially above the rises being won elsewhere in the public sector of which Network Rail is arguably part. The armed forces, for example, were only given a 3.5 per cent increase, and others received less.

Meanwhile, the RMT is upset over the harmonisation of terms and conditions for infrastucture workers that Network Rail has brought in-house. The union, which seems oblivious to the realities of modern working, wants a maximum 35-hour working week and a "move towards" a 34 hour week and "where possible a maximum four-day rostered week over a 13 week cycle".

The union is right when it complains that the cost of living is rising faster than the official inflation rate. Unfortunately, it is stuck inÂ a public sector mindset, filled with economically-unrealistic thinking. Just as a whole country's economic growth is created byÂ increases in the population's economic output, higher wages are created by productivity increases. The RMT's desire for a 34-hour working week shows a complete lack of constructive thinking.

Network Rail suffers from excessive upward pressures on its costs. Its passengers are increasingly going to be punished by this. Currently taxation pays half of the cost of rail travel, but the Government's five-year plan stipulates that this will reduce to 23 per cent by 2014. Passengers will thus have to stomach substantial fare rises; and to keep those rises even vaguely acceptable, there is a need for significant efficiency improvements in Network Rail's operations, too.

Moreover, the perception of a more strike-willing RMT could cause significant reputational damage to the railways and endanger the significant growth in rail use over the past decade, encouraging companies to switch to road. Is that really what the RMT wants?